What are the General Benefits of using Social Media?

Like the fax machine of the 1980′s and email of the 2000′s, Social media marketing has gone from being a “business option” to being a “business essential”, and yet you still have time to get ahead of your competitors.

The main benefits to running a social media campaign are:

Improve your websites conversion rate
You will see an increase in your website conversion rates. The amount of website traffic (or visitors) compared to the number of sales (or leads) you get is called the sales conversion ratio, if you monitor this ratio before and after installing an embedded Twitter feed you will see it improve. People are re- assured by the presence of a regularly updated Twitter feed on a website (hours, not days). It shows professionalism and clearly displays that your site is open for business.

Brand recognition and repeat exposure
Your social media followers or browsers are in an environment they are comfortable in. It is the very best place for you to place your brand and have them take notice. It is said of traditional advertising that a potential customer has to see your advert seven times before taking any action. This is your opportunity to get your brand under their noses without being pushy.

Getting ahead of your competitors
Do your competitors use social media? Most of your competitors will probably not be doing a good job of embracing social media, so this is your chance to race ahead. If they are engaging well in the social networks then you must get involved or you risk being left behind and losing your audience to your competition. Your potential customers or clients are engaging in social media personally, whether you like it or not. When they visit a website they expect to find a social media presence and will judge you if there isn’t one – or worse if they find one that hasn’t been updated for weeks or months.

Grow your marketing power
As your followers increase your marketing power increases. Initially the SEO benefits of social media are all that you are interested in, but over time you’ll gain a loyal following, who you can market to at any time – at zero additional cost! The more following you have – the more people want to join in and get involved. It’s the ‘crowd effect’ people always want to see what the crowd is interested in, and they join the crowd!

Improve your authority
When people see you have a busy social network in your chosen field they will automatically associate authority with it. Your business will be seen as having increased credibility and specialist knowledge.

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)
Google has placed more and more prominence in what are commonly referred to as “social signals”. Your social media marketing campaign will tick a lot of boxes for Google but we’ve found the very best way to get an SEO benefit from your social media campaign is to embed your Twitter feed into the homepage of your website. This constantly change text is just the type of thing that pushes Google’s buttons and can help propel your website up the rankings, resulting in more visitors and more sales. We can help embed the feed into your site.

Website traffic
This goes hand in hand with SEO – because Google could be giving you more traffic – but as your social media campaign grows and matures you will also see more and more direct traffic from the social networks.